The vote in the Bundestag on the reform of asylum and residence law has shown the rift running through the Union in migration policy.
A number of CDU MPs abstained, meaning they wanted to say: what the traffic light coalition did was not that bad.
The crack is a child of the Merkel era and one of the reasons that led to the rise of the AfD.
This came about mainly because the part of the Union that now belonged to the naysayers was banished to the internal opposition and treated as a "right-wing" foreign body even during government periods.
It was only a matter of time before a right-wing party would be formed in Germany, as in most EU countries, to exploit the issue.
No prospect of improvement
The stability with which a fundamentally desolate radical party can hold its own and the helplessness of how to deal with this AfD – especially in East Germany – shows that there is no prospect of improvement.
The parties of the traffic light coalition, all of which are left-wing parties in this context, add fuel to the fire by taking the easy route on all fronts of migration policy.
In the present case, rejected asylum seekers are generally given the prospect of staying.
Like so much in asylum law, this is humanely understandable because the rule of law is reaching its limits.
Politically, however, it means that the rift through Germany is getting deeper.